That's Just Insipid!

Originality

From reading the other hurt men
who ring pain from their throats

like broken juice, I am
friendlier with its sting,

as if it were a franchaise
beckoning me from the interstate,

than if it were a mom and pop
restaurant, with homemade

styles of cheesburger.
No.

Actually, if this voice of mine
is to escape into its own color

and frequency, the red-haired
barbs snaking like angels

that invite me to fly with their suffering
must become curious and found

only within my bony cage.

flatline

There is no pulse in Watertown, but there is good cuisine. {and it's Solstice, baby!}

By the way, I've lost all of your #s I had saved on my cellular, so call or email them to me, please.

Unreceived Mouth draft #2

At first it seemed
the choice of sherbets
was the dream's color-code
for liquors and guilt

but the analysis that followed
in the langor of the bedsheets
neglected the tooth I
wrenched out

the bloody texture of loss—
but farewell, I felt, to that
rabid bi-cusbid that
witnessed all the horrible words I've spoken

and the promise of her kissing lips
never swallowed, and always,
always fear.

locus

I'll be in Watertown for almost a week, just enough time to imbibe the summery goodness of the North country: Lake Ontario, Campbell's point, Sacket(te')s Harbor, salad and grilled steak on our back porch. These have been the staples of summer joy for the last...well basically my whole life, save the stint in Alaska. It's inescabably odd to accept that I won't be working at Flynn Pool for the first summer in six years. It opens Friday, and I'll probably stop by to spot Quackenbushes and see that certain Flynn legacies are kept.

I know, I know. Suck it up, you suggest. Well, I am, but if you know me then you've already agreed to deal with my habit of wallowing in sentimentality. Seeing Laura today for perhaps the last time ever didn't help, although it actually pleasant to catch up in person. I had to retrieve my mini-fridge from her, and we hadn't seen each other in person for a couple months. It still shakes me a little, though, but such is to be expected when you're suddenly face to face with that face and presence you loved for so long. It didn't hurt that much, though. It was just...nice.

The weekend promises to be warm and beachy. Mom even stocked the fridge with Killian's for me (yay mom), even though, given recent trends, I'm considering seriously modifying my relationship with alcohol. If I mention my concerns, please downplay any insights that might arise in your mind about me "calling for help." It's more that I just feel better about the situation (if there is one) if I'm vocal about it with my friends and accomplices. I know my enablers — bbth people and moods — and my limits. I have ammuntion, as well: I've done some pretty simple, but dumb things recently, directly or indirectly related to booze. I usually think that the disjunction between my casual drinking and my alertness and alacrity when "on the job" was enough to dispell disapproving looks and feelings from certain co-workers, but I'm beginning to reconsider the image I project.

Actually, since this is turning into a mini-rumination on drinkin', I have to give props to Aamir, with whom I stayed on the trek to Nashville. Aamir is an old Watertown High School mate and we'd often have intense discourses on all sorts of big and little points. He's perhaps the bitterest, most cynical person I know, but he's always well-thought. He's not so much dark, gothic cynical as he is stone-pragmatist and frequent social critic. We got talking about the taste of beer. He couldn't get past the truth of the first taste one has of beer, which is almost always "yuck." He could not accept that I enjoy the sensation of beer because he insists I've merely been lying to myself for so long that it tastes good. I've often made mention of my love affair with beer, and I argued passionately that drinking beer gives me great pleasure, taste-wise as well as intoxication-wise. It's aromatic, it's a sensation, it's about half flavor and half texture. He would not move: beer always tastes bad. (being a Muslim, he has also never had any alcohol or beer) To break it down, Aamir thinks in pure ideal states and does not take history or time into consideration; I argued that gradual changes indeed change a person's reality. But he made a good point, and has stirred up some of my values and convictions for re-examination. It was a socratic night, and then we smoked hookah, which is really fun, especially while listening to Kid A.

So yeah, that's where I am after a rambly-headed drive from Long Island to Oswego for fridge pick up, and then 45 minutes up sunny, Ontario-lined Route 3 and into Watertown, NY.

Two topics remain for after dinner: cellphone reincarnation and campy camp camp.

While in Nashville a week ago, free on a computer un-nannied, I finally found access to the Bright Eyes lyrics that have been somewhat haunting me since I heard them perform this song at Field Day Fest. While I think that the only person who ever fully lived up to the hype-inducing adjective Dylan-esque is Bob Dylan, I think Conner suffers little from the comparison. He's not Dylan. He is young and a gifted lyricist, but instead of Dylan's confidence and aloofness, Conner has young rage and a cultivated pain that I can really really really relate to, given the recent history of my heart. And he's my age, too. So, here are the words, and they're not poetry because they're great lyrics, and the best lyrics don't cross too far into poetry. Good examples of both are to be cherished and shared. Thus, here are the words to "One Foot in Front of the Other" :

If you walk away, I walk away
first tell me which road you will take
I dont want to risk our paths crossing someday
so you walk that way i'll walk this way.

The future hangs over our heads
and it moves with each current event
until it falls all around us, like a cold steady rain
just stay in when its lookin' this way.

The moon is laying low in the sky
forcing everything metal to shine
and the sidewalk holds diamonds like a jewerly store case
they argue "walk this way, no walk this way."

Laura is asleep in my bed
as im leaving she wakes up and says
"I dreamed you were carried away on the crest of a wave...
baby dont go away, come here."

Theres kids playing guns in the street
and ones pointing his tree branch at me
so I put my hands up, I say "enough is enough"
if you walk away, i'll walk away.
(and then he shot me dead)

I found a liquid cure
for my landlock blues
it will pass away like a slow parade
it's leaving but I dont know how soon.

The worlds got me dizzy again
you'd think after 22 years i'd be used to the spin
and it only feels worse when i stay in one place,
so im always pacing around or walking away.

Im drinking the ink from my pen
and im balancing history books up on my head
and it all boils down to one quotable phrase
"if u love something give it away."

A good woman will pick you apart
a box full of suggestions for a possible heart
and you may be offended and you may be afraid
but dont walk away, dont walk away.

We made love on the livingroom floor
with the noise in the backround from a televised war
and in that deafening pleasure I thought I heard someone say
"if we walk away they'll walk away."

Well greed is a bottomless pit
and our freedoms a joke we're just taking a piss
and the whole world must watch the sad comic display
if you're still free start running away.
(cause' they're coming for ya)

I've grown tired of holding this pose
I feel more like a stranger each time I come home
So im making a deal with the devils of fame
saying "let me walk away, please."

You will be free child once you have died
from the shackles of language and measurable time
and then we can trade places, play musical graves
till they walk away, walk away, walk away.

So im up at dawn, puttin on my shoes
I just want to make a clean escape
Im leaving but i dont know where to
Im leaving but i dont know where to.

Neither Tragic Nor Comic draft #1

He liked the way your lies blew past your teeth
with patient streaks of onion underneath
until their raspy trails went buried in the beach.
But reeling now, drunk with dusk, he’d rather
swell with solitude like waves chasing waves
if it weren’t for all the sandwiches,
or khaki’s erotic boundary with thigh,
and a cast of other memories that harden
his precious gaze into rock for weathering.
And isn’t erosion just laughter at permanence?